Why Do Project Management or Troubleshooting?
Your design and development project is going badly: e.g., scope, schedule, and costs slipping or out-of-control; poor quality work-product; grueling review process; stakeholder’s participation in project poorly defined, organized, and managed.
You need a competent project-manager to manage an entire project consisting of design/redesign and development of your online application or website, from the beginning of the planning process to the final result. This includes bringing the right staff together to represent the company’s interests, forming an effective project team with the right representatives of the designers and programmers, good planning, facilitating productive meetings and discussions, resolving conflicts, and ensuring good progress and quality results.
Methodology
I provide management for an entire project or ongoing department, from the beginning of the planning process to the final result. I’m trained as a “real” manager as well as a project manager. Everything I know and have experienced in this field tells me that the largest source of software project-management failure is 1) lack of clarity about who the right stakeholders are (internal and external), 2) clarity about their prioritized purposes and unmet desires (from customer, CEO, to programmer), and 3) clarity about the right relationships and effectiveness of communication among them to help them collaborate to meet their purposes. Everything else – big M Methodologies, UML, Agile, PM tools, PMPs, and any other methodologies, tools, or certifications that the industry espouses — should always be for the sake of that, and that is what I focus on while demonstrating competent to expert skill in most of these approaches.
My approach offers the best of both worlds, in that I am an excellent researcher and planner, with a large repertoire of advanced methods and skills specifically adapted for software that obviates much of the need for trail and error down the road, and I am a huge proponent of short-interval scheduling with tight feedback loops, which is the heart of the Agile philosophy. I usually fly under the banner of Agile, while complementing it with more sophisticated methods as the need arises.
The full repertoire of my management/project management skills is outline below:
The Organization
Individuals
- Hiring: Define requirements, locate & evaluate candidates, negotiate hiring, group interviews & decisions.
- Retaining: Help employees with personal issues (e.g., satisfaction & careers) & supply what they need to work happily & effectively.
- Firing: Decide on terminations, negotiate arrangements that work for both company & employee
Groups
- Relationships: Build teams, resolve conflicts, promote team spirit & good relationships among team members.
- Principles of Change-Agency: how to influence without offending
- Methods for Conflict Resolution: psychology of conflicts; re-framing conflict resolution as joint problem-solving
- Organizational Design: Structure your team, division of labor.
Collaboration
Information: the content team members need to do their jobs
- Ideas: assumptions, facts, data, reasoning.
- The criteria for sound ideas
- Discussions: principles of brainstorming
- Documents: reports, e-mail, databases, knowledge-bases, etc.
Communication: sending/receiving information-content.
- Linking: Interface between your team, other teams, & the rest of the organization, other than at group meetings; e.g., coordinate with your manager or other managers.
- Group Meetings: Conduct & participate in meetings of the team you manage & of the management team you belong to (led by your manager). Includes linking during such meetings.
- Media: Effective use of the appropriate media for one-on-one communications: e-mail, phone, or face-to face.
- Information Systems: IT & manual information systems to organize, store, & access information quickly, reliably, & securely.
Planning: What your team does for your company & why: Planning, working on, & tracking.
- Define: Choose external goals/aims & define them adequately.
- Criteria for the Definition of Objectives
- Prioritize: Order them by importance & urgency.
- Generate Possible Means: Design ways to achieve them.
- Evaluate Means & Select: Use criteria you define.
- Specify Details of Selected Means: Specific enough for implementation, coordination, & feedback loops.
- Implement Selected Means: Work toward achieving external goals/aims.
- Evaluate Progress: Keep track of your team’s progress on external goals/aims, including enter data, generate reports, quality control, check on stakeholder satisfaction, & evaluate progress on scheduling & budgeting.
- Revise: Adjust external goals/aims & means as work progresses.
Benefits of This Approach
- A sound project-plan
- An accurate and reliable schedule for the project that you can count on
- A high-quality result
- An efficient project that minimizes time and cost
- Staying within budget, avoiding surprises and change-orders
- Minimized risks
- Accommodate the aims of a large number of stakeholders and team members
- Effective group decision-making
- Greater satisfaction for the project team and the client’s team
Read my Case Study.
1. The Organization
a. Individuals
1) Hiring: Define requirements, locate & evaluate candidates, negotiate hiring, group interviews & decisions.
2) Retaining: Help employees with personal issues (e.g., satisfaction & careers) & supply what they need to work happily & effectively.
3) Firing: Decide on terminations, negotiate arrangements that work for both company & employee
b. Groups
1) Relationships: Build teams, resolve conflicts, promote team spirit & good relationships among team members.
a) Principles of Change-Agency: how to influence without offending
b) Methods for Conflict Resolution: psychology of conflicts; re-framing conflict resolution as joint problem-solving
2) Organizational Design: Structure your team, division of labor.
a) Poor Fit Between Groups & Their Goals
b) Too Much Distance Between Groups Who Need to Collaborate
c) Inadequate Linking
d) Poor Fit Between Individuals & Their Work
e) Too Many Levels
f) Excessive Span of Control
g) Disparities Between the Formal & Informal Structures
h) Other Factors and Problems
2. Collaboration
a. Information: the content team members need to do their jobs.
1) Ideas: assumptions, facts, data, reasoning.
a) The criteria for sound ideas
2) Discussions: principles of brainstorming
3) Documents: reports, e-mail, databases, knowledge-bases, etc.
b. Communication: sending/receiving information-content.
1) Linking: Interface between your team, other teams, & the rest of the organization, other than at group meetings; e.g., coordinate with your manager or other managers.
2) Group Meetings: Conduct & participate in meetings of the team you manage & of the management team you belong to (led by your manager). Includes linking during such meetings.
3) Media: Effective use of the appropriate media for one-on-one communications: e-mail, phone, or face-to face.
4) Information Systems: IT & manual information systems to organize, store, & access information quickly, reliably, & securely.
3. Planning: What your team does for your company & why: Planning, working on, & tracking.
a. Framework for Understanding Problems, Goals, and Decisions as a Whole
1) Unified methodology for problem solving, achieving goals, and making decisions
2) The Problem/Solution Ladder
3) The Relationship between Problems, Goals, & Decisions
b. Goals & Aims (Goals are finite, Aims are ongoing.)
1) Define: Choose external goals/aims & define them adequately.
a) Criteria for the Definition of Objectives
2) Prioritize: Order them by importance & urgency.
3) Generate Possible Means: Design ways to achieve them.
4) Evaluate Means & Select: Use criteria you define.
5) Specify Details of Selected Means: Specific enough for implementation, coordination, & feedback loops.
6) Implement Selected Means: Work toward achieving external goals/aims.
7) Evaluate Progress: Keep track of your team’s progress on external goals/aims, including enter data, generate reports, quality control, check on stakeholder satisfaction, & evaluate progress on scheduling & budgeting.
Revise: Adjust external goals/aims & means as work progresses.
c. Problems
1) Define: Understand what the external problem really is.
2) Prioritize: Order them by importance & urgency.
3) Generate Possible Solutions: Brainstorm freely & widely.
4) Evaluate Solutions & Choose: Use criteria you define.
5) Specify Details of Chosen Solution: Specific enough for implementation, coordination, & feedback loops.
6) Implement Chosen Solution: Work on implementing solutions to external problems.
7) Monitor Solution: Keep track of your team’s progress on implementing solutions, check on stakeholder satisfaction.
Revise Solutions: Adjust solutions & implementation specifics for external problems as work progresses.
d. Decisions
1) Define: Identify external decisions to be made & define adequately.
2) Prioritize: Order them by importance & urgency.
3) Generate Alternatives: Brainstorm freely & widely.
4) Evaluate Alternatives & Decide: Use criteria you define.
5) Specify Details of Chosen Alternative: Specific enough for implementation, coordination, & feedback loops.
6) Implement Chosen Alternative: Work on carrying out external decisions.
7) Monitor Implementation: Keep track of your team’s progress on carrying out the decision, check on stakeholder satisfaction.
Revise: Adjust external decisions as work progresses.
